


History Lesson

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Young Avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-08
Updated: 2007-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Young Avengers 8, Captain America tries to help Eli sort his life off. Cap/Eli.</p>
            </blockquote>





	History Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zee

 

 

Your name is Elijah Bradley and you are not a walking, talking cliché. You are not an angry young black man right out of Central Casting. Bitter, sure. Resentful, hell yes. But angry? No, you're never angry. What you are is alone.

You're used to being alone, the odd man out. Only black man on the team. Only straight one (yeah, you've noticed the way Kate and Cassie are inseparable), since Iron Lad went back to the future (heh). And, let's face it, the only one without anything special about them.

If you believed in luck, you'd blame a family curse. Your grandfather... well, the fact that Steve Rogers isn't called the white Captain America pretty much sums it up. Your father was in `Nam. Nuff said. And you thought you could beat the streak.

But the loneliest part of all was having the others look to you for leadership. That was supposed to be Iron Lad's gig. The adventures of Kang when he was a boy. Ha. You were supposed to be the Hawkeye, the Wolverine, the guy who questions the big man's leadership and gets proven wrong. You're not supposed to be leading the team. Their lives aren't supposed to be in your hands.

Oh God, you just had the funniest thought. What if you do that whole DC comics legacy thing and end up being Captain America II? That's funnier than anything the Simpsons have put out since the new millennium. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Ha.

So you are not angry, you're not depressed, you're not anything. You're just kinda there. The census forms list you as African-American, but you're not black or white, you're just kinda there. You do the library thing, the school thing, the family dinner thing, and at night you try not to dream about how good it felt to fight for what you believed in, to get the chance to do what your grandfather never could. But that's all it is. A dream.

And one day, something shocks you out of your ennui. Captain America. The Sentinel of Liberty. Cap. At your door. He's not giving you the full stars and stripes treatment, just wearing his chain mail under a jacket. He's even got on a pair of jeans. Probably with the tights and buccaneer boots on underneath, somehow, because he's always ready to go.

The poster boy for Eisenhower's America. Lily-white, straight teeth, clear blue eyes, muscular but not too muscular. Like Superman, but real. You speak before he can even open those Ma's-apple-pie-quaffing lips. "I'm not interested."

He's so fucking perfect, standing there. The American fucking Dream. He doesn't just give people hope. He demands it. No wonder you don't like him. No. That's not it. You talk about your grandpa like you'd seen him in action, but... truth is, growing up, your definition of heroism is Snow White there standing in the doorway.

And now you're giving him lip like he was behind gramps' Montreal Screwjob. Gramps would tell you to forgive and forget, but obviously this guy has an agenda. A righteous, patriotic agenda, but he's still gonna try and use you.

But hey, like you're gonna say no to Captain America.

He actually rode a motorcycle to your house. An honest-to-God chopper. He even makes an Easy Rider joke. It's lame, but you laugh anyway. Wouldn't want him to think you don't like him. But there is no way for two heterosexual men to comfortably ride on one motorcycle. That's why sidecars were invented. Every bump in the road feels like it's going to jar you right off until you wrap your arms around his shoulder like a snotty rich boy's sweater in an eighties movie. And okay, you are not thinking about how muscular he is under the chain mail. Your thumbs just happen to find the edges of his muscles, well-defined as they are.

You used to have that going for you. You were an Adonis, you were Booker T, you were Mike Tyson without the lisp. But each day you go without MGH you can feel your definition drop off into slim doughiness, no matter how many reps you do or weights you lift.

Cap and you don't talk on the motorcycle. You'd have to shout in his ear to be heard. On the plane ride you take after the ride, the two of you make small talk over the engine sounds. Cap asks you about your schoolwork, you tell him about that girl you like that you think likes you back. He nods and looks wistful; when he was a kid, the girls probably wore hoop skirts instead of miniskirts. It seems impossible that, long ago, men like him were laughing, flirting youths.

You disembark. The flight was short at supersonic speeds. It feels like an eon since you got on that bike. It's all history now: Patriot, the plane, the feel of his back against your flesh, everything.

You don't know how you're supposed to feel as your feet walk, muted, through the neatly trimmed grass. White crosses face you in every direction, all in neat little rows. Still at attention, even in the grave. One day your grandfather will be buried here and you know how you're supposed to feel about that. You already feel it, boiling inside your gut, threatening to burst loose and scream in Steve Rogers' face. "It should've been him!" you want to say. Or maybe "It should be me!" Or maybe you don't want to say anything at all.

"He was a good man," Cap says, staring at one grave marker, no different than the others that surround it. "A good friend."

 **James Buchanan Barnes** the headstone reads. You know the name. What fan wouldn't?

Bucky.

"I don't want this for you," Cap says, turning from the grave to you. But in a way, he's still looking at it. He's always looking at it. "I don't want this for anyone. There's so much you could do with your life. Be a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, a soldier..."

"Yeah, I'll fly right up the ranks," you say in your not-angry voice. "The drug-addicted nigger. I'll go straight to the top."

Captain America doesn't wince. His stare just gets harder and cooler. "Children are meant to play soldier. Not be one. Grow up."

He begins to walk away. You follow after him. "What? That's what you wish you had told Bucky? You got hang-ups, man, that's fine, but don't take `em out on me and don't take them out on my friends!"

"Your friends!" He wheels on you. "You really think what you're doing is best for your friends? Giving up? That the example you want to set?"

"They don't look up to me."

"Don't they?"

"You don't want me to be a superhero!" you scream at him. "And you won't let me just be me! What do you want from me!?"

Cap stares at you. There's something weird in that look. He leans forward, no longer towering over you. His eyes bore into you as his lips purse and suddenly you're short of breath. He stops an inch from your face. "I want you... to be happy."

He pulls away.

"Come on. I'll take you home."

You follow him back to the plane and wonder if maybe you weren't already home among that forest of little white crosses.

 


End file.
